Commercial Banking

Corporate banking is in essence providing banking services to businesses, and there is a wide variety of roles available within the larger corporate banks. These include finance-heavy roles, such as market analysis and lending, as well as roles that are more focused on business development, targeting new new customers with the ultimate aim of increasing profits. Depending upon your chosen speciality, you could find yourself crunching numbers for internal documents, creating reports for management, overseeing the cash flow of clients, or researching potential avenues to increase market share.

Corporate banking - lending money and helping to expand businesses - is vital for a healthy and growing economy, reducing unemployment and improving living standards. This should enhance job satisfaction for those working within this sector of financial services.

Who To Work For

When looking into prospective employers, it's important to look not only at the bank's reputation, profits, and the potential opportunities for progression within the company, but also to look at who the bank's clients are. Some corporate bankers prefer working more with SMEs, where there's a real sense of achievement on a more personal level, whereas others might prefer working with global businesses and having more complex challenges and workloads. According to the Federal Reserve, the top corporate banks in the United States are JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and US Bancorp. Across the border, the Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion bank lead the way.

Salary Information

It may seem that corporate bankers draw the short straw when it comes to salaries, but in many cases an annual bonus is a large part of an employee's wages, and can make a massive difference, especially if the bank has profited within the past year. Graduates and junior bankers can expect a starting salary of around $55,000 with a bonus of roughly 20 percent, while those with more experience, knowledge, and who have shown a long term loyalty to the bank can command base salaries of around $380,000 and bigger bonuses that might be 50 or 100 percent of salary.